


Madness and Magic

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Experimentation, Finding home, Fractured persona, Galra clone, Galra-hybrid, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Fanart, Kuro Week 2017, M/M, Mentions of Sheith, Nightmares, Pain, Scars, arena fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 09:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11310675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Let's start at the beginning, at the creation of a man given a purpose and a heart, both in conflict. He struggles to rise, continues to fall, trying to embrace ideals and the all too human side of him. They call it an unfortunate side effect, but Kuro wants to fight for its very existence.And then one day, he realizes there are others who will fight for it too.(Inspired by the story of Kuro created bytheprojectava)





	1. Madness

**Author's Note:**

> So, for Kuro Week, theprojectava created a wonderful backstory for her Kuro, and this is going to be just a simple supplement of stories for her work because I am absolutely in love with all that this Kuro is. I hope you'll go shower her the same sort of love, for her work is wonderful!
> 
>  You can find the first part here: [Madness](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/161942571118/kuro-week-day-1-madness-it-was-madness)

There was method, and there was madness. Kuro knew the Druids were capable of both, had experienced it himself through countless excursions into the Arena, under numerous torments all excused in the name of science and learning.

He would be a crowning achievement. A hero, a thing to be feared and rightly so.

Ah, but he wasn’t Kuro then. He was Zero, a starting place, a nothing and a beginning. He was the launching point for a counter-resistance. He would be everything the Black Paladin was not, and in that he was supposed to be better. But how did a nameless experiment prove itself more than the original?

A name was something that grounded. It gave meaning. It defined an existence.

And he certainly existed. You had to be alive to feel the pain, and you had to have a heart to know that some of this was wrong. Very wrong.

So, how did he define himself?

He knew he didn’t want this. He knew he wasn’t Shiro or Champion, that he wasn’t better because an entity in and of itself could not be out-made as it was the only one of its kind. He knew you could share blood and genetics, but a heart and mind were something all one’s own. And he didn’t want the Druids to suffocate either of those, for they were his, and they told him he was better than this.

Better than the forced fights in the Arena. Better than a mechanical arm. Better than the endless hours of torture on that cold metal slab of a table. Better than the monster they told him he needed to be because that somehow made him better than a champion.

The Druids tried to define him by their methods, trying to carve him out of pain and slaughtering his fears, trying to fortify him with a killer’s finely honed instincts. They tried to make him something lesser while claiming he would be greater. And he may not have known much, but he knew this was a lie.

Their words sat like snakes in the very core of his being, writhing over one another and threatening to strike if he made one false step, let slip one too-human word.

So, he learned.

He became ruthless, digging his hands into the worst of all he ever imagined he could be. He tore through opponents, standing in the crimson of desired victory, and held silent at the knives slipping beneath his skin and the way his veins would sing with fire. The fear of death slowly drained from his eyes as they spoke of him, of the ways to make him better, of how best to strip the human from his heart.

He embraced madness, wore it like a second skin until the Druids stopping whispering malcontent and started to smile. And as their words fell to quiet murmurs, just enough to remind, he knew that he could play this role, bit by bit letting the blood run out on his humanity with every win in the Arena.

Bit by bit building a wall of iron around his heart.

He was zero, a nothing and a somebody.


	2. Identity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find Day 2 of theprojectava's story [right here](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/161994637623/kuro-week-day-2-identity-and-i-cannot-help)!

He has dreams. Or maybe they’re waking nightmares. He’s not sure, but they permeate his thoughts like dust cover after a building’s collapse, coating everything inside his head with a thick white blanket. Some days, it feels like he can run his fingers right through it and expose the hard truth of who he is beneath. Other days, it’s like trying to dig through layers of ash.  


Digging and digging, only to find there’s nothing beneath but the ground he’s standing on. He can spend hours trying to uncover himself, and in the end, be left with only the broken and burnt-out reminders of everything he thought himself to be.

Nothing more than the handful of an identity, no more useful to him than the charred embers of fire left to run itself into the ground.

The Druids’ words make him feel like that. Like everything he could have ever wanted to be is nothing more than the flicker of a wasteful desire, a fool’s wish that is better tossed to the wind and forgotten. There will be no stars to harbor it, no brilliant flash of light to remind him to reach and dream and become more than he ever thought he could be.

He has already been defined.

He is Shiro, and yet he is not. He is the supposed better of a man who had defied and denied, who had declared himself his own man in the face of everything that told him to succumb to his worst. He is Kuro’s predecessor, that very foundation on which he has been built, and there are days Kuro thinks he can embrace it.

It’s why the Red Paladin calls to him like a lodestone.

There have been moments, flashes bright and startling as lightning strikes over the dry of the desert, that play inside his mind like Memory’s greatest hits. He’s seen the part of the Red Paladin’s lips, heard the quiet gasps as a name echoes in the darkness. He has felt laughter against his skin and known how brilliant fire can burn inside a gaze, a light that’s never-ending. He has felt the beginnings of home in the way a smile has crept over the Red Paladin's lips, yet he knows those blue-grey eyes aren’t fixed on him. But, Kuro thinks he can find the lines to set his parameters by when he looks at the one Shiro calls _Keith_.

The loss of his arm is similar in that way. Kuro remembers it twice over. What his body recalls most vividly is that day in the Arena. It remembers the fear spilling hot into his veins, the pull of his desire to survive. He remembers just how red blood can spill over white floors, and it strikes him that the Arena had been built for that precise purpose - to showcase just how brilliant life looks when it’s running out of time.

He remembers the acid bite of bile at the back of his throat when he thought about that very reason.  
  
There are nights, though, where he sees himself on the Druid’s examination table. He knows they’ve cut down his arm, past muscle and sinew and bone. It’s an experiment of another kind, to see just how a body was constructed, how much loss could be handled and what could fill the void left behind in its wake. Shiro’s arm was a means to further knowledge, to craft something more than human. 

Better than human.  


His arm, however, had been a sacrifice to the gods of violence. There had been no meaning in its loss.

Kuro remembers this, and part of him begins to remember that he is not Shiro. Part of him begins to think he could be better than Shiro, not as Shiro’s replacement or the second coming of a Champion, but as a man who could outreach anything Shiro ever hoped to hold onto.

He starts to think he could hate everything that man is supposed to mean to him, for what is hatred but its own act of defiance?

Now, if only the darkness inside of his head would stop telling him there are no gods in that belief, nothing worth holding onto in that particular flame. If only it would stop singing to him of all the ways he is one and yet not the same, that he can be both sides of a coin and still be himself.


	3. Mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And theprojectava's Day 3 story can be found [right here](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/162043789083/kuro-week-day-3-mirror-reflection-he-hated)!

A mirrored reflection is the biggest lie Kuro feels he’s ever been told. It stands there, mocking every aspect of himself with all the ways he simply isn’t.  


Isn’t Champion.

Isn’t Shiro.

Isn’t even sure of who he is, a number without a name, with the weight of a destiny he can’t even claim as his own hanging down over him like a moon on an ocean’s horizon.

A mirror-image shows nothing of truth. Nothing of the _real_ truth, the kind sunk down beside a soul, down where the blackest bits of all that he is resides. Now, there’s something honest to take home. He knows that darkness, feels its weight differently.

It’s a heart in his hand, the knife against a throat.

It’s the place that feels most alive, and it’s threatening to color him the right shade of wrong. Not quite what the Druids want, but enough to make him feel like he had a choice in all of this. They may have put him on this path, but he got to decide how he would stray from it all. He could embrace the name of Champion, then he would cut it down into something all his own.

Build it brick by black brick into a place he could call home.

By the end of it all, the world wouldn’t remember Shiro, though it may remember the violence.

So, he would dig a little deeper, right down into the very center of himself. He would pull stars out of the void of all he currently was. He would spin galaxies out of himself until there could be no denying the life that spun within him was his and his alone.

He would be his own Big Bang.

The world would never be the same again.

First, however, he had to start with the things the world could see. Lines that would no longer sit neat and pink but would course across skin with jagged edges, the sort bought by ripping Life out by its very seams and setting it free within the universe. No longer tied down to the expectations levied upon it, but bursting out into existence once more like a ship reformed, anchored no more to the darkest depths of the sea, but now breaking over its surface to sail again.

Piece by piece, he’d refashion himself out of the image of another man, a monster of his own making.

It’s the one thing they could never take away from him.


	4. Betrayal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And again, the theme and story for Day 4 as told by theprojectava is [right over here](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/162088837693/kuro-week-day-4-betrayal-i-couldnt-do-it)!

Kuro knew warmth the same way he came to know betrayal, as that intimate brush of a blade against his heart. When he was in the Arena, there was no denying that every point of contact with another body sent a flourishing of heat beneath his palm, his knuckles, every available swath of skin that could sweat and trickle with blood. Warmth was the way a body bled, including his own.

It was the distinct difference between the living and the not-so-alive.

Kuro knew warmth because it drained out of challengers and the fear-drowned just like the light in their eyes at the end of every match. Warmth faded and faded until there was nothing left but the cold reminder of everything that had once been. He felt it in the smooth lines of the bars that kept him caged, the ones he wanted to break; he felt it in the hopes that kept him collared, telling him there was a heart still beating in his chest.

Mostly, Kuro felt it in the way he failed everyone, including himself. Warmth was everything he couldn’t have because he simply wasn’t good enough to hold it.

Which is what made that first moment he had stood before Lance so painful. Not the very first moment. No, the first _real_ moment, the one where he was acknowledged as something far beyond Shiro and this notion of Champion he had tried to cling to like a sinner to redemption.

But his faith in that was dying.

He could not be the Champion because the Champion he knew never existed. Instead, he was left looking at the remnants of a man who was just that - a man, defined by his own humanity, the very thing he could not shed.

Everything he had been told held weight, this idea of a life he had to measure up to and then exceed? All of it was no more tangible than smoke and dreams. Kuro could wave his fingers right through them and _poof!_ they'd be gone, which left him with a handful of nothing.

Kuro knew the potential of betrayal. He just never expected it to come from his own constructs. Even if those thoughts had been built up around him like Babylonian skyscrapers, in the end, they could only to be devastated by Truth. It left him with a world of rubble to navigate in search of himself. A thousand different ideas, a thousand different words to try to define himself again.

But there was warmth against his shoulder. It was sliding up his back in a way that didn’t bring pain like his body expected it would. Lance’s fingers were gentle as they glided across fabric and scars alike, and it put a different sort of pain inside of him.

A different sort of betrayal.

It was the kind of betrayal that was broken open over his own expectations. Where memory told him pain would spark, there was only kindness woven beneath fingertips. Where he thought to bleed, there came only a quiet understanding to mend his heart. And when weakness reared up yet again, stinging at his eyes, Kuro found the warmth of a body wrapping itself around him, and for the first time, he began to consider the worth of a human heart.

Not Shiro’s, but his own.


	5. Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my favorite pieces was Day 5's and the story idea behind it just made my heart break for Kuro. You can see it all [right here](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/162136156753/kuro-week-day-5-nightmares-eeeh-so-this-is)!

He dreams he’s drowning in ink. There is black spilling into his lungs, staining the very life of him darker than the blood on his hands and the disappointment in his mind. It’s robbing him of breath, and it’s telling him that death will not come easy, that it will be slow and it will be painful, and it will only arrive after he has paid the highest of costs.

He will never have a life to call his own.

But he can dream of it, and when he does, the nightmares come and eat the very best of them alive.

He cannot wake from them. As they devour the very best of all he could have hoped for, he’s made to watch, trapped in this pool of liquid devastation with his head just above the surface and his lungs burning for air. Every bit of the destructive nature the world wants him to embody sinks into his skin as he treads those waters, snuffing out the starlight in his cells and waiting for the entirety of him to go dark as a moonless night.

Until no hope can exist, no dreams can survive. Until there is only the remembrance of pain and loss, binding his will up as tight as Fate’s red ribbon, just as inescapable.

So, the dreams turn to horrors, and his sleep forgets what peace should be. He writhes, and he turns, he cries out some nights, and on others, he simply cries. All of this outside of his own recognition, his mind lost to the harsher realities of his nightmares, for those projections seem real, _feel_ real, are based on the very reality of his existence, and Kuro can’t avoid them for all he tries.

The day affords him control, however. Better control at least, enough to survive in the Arena, enough to not succumb to his wounds or the Druid’s tortuous machinations. He remembers the day Shiro arrived, and he remembers reminding himself that he still has control enough to not tear out the Black Paladin’s throat for the very lie that he has become, has enough wit about him not to claw into his mind for all the things he does not do. The Black Paladin simply sits there, watching, waiting, and Kuro hates to think that there might be pity in that stare, so he lets his dreams convince him there is hatred burning in those gray eyes instead.

And in those dreams that morph in the hazy mists of his subconscious, becoming monsters fit for the telling like all good stories need, Kuro lets himself pull apart the man that brought him to this, brought him his very existence.

Without Shiro, he would not be.

Without Shiro, he could be something else.

And then, Shiro starts to talk. His voice is calm, his words measured and even. There is a cautious warmth that permeates every syllable, a quiet need to understand. Bit by bit, Kuro begins to answer until the answers come easy, and he finds there’s something almost likable about this man who is neither Champion nor Black Paladin completely, but some human mix of the two.

Kuro comes to learn that Shiro is not him.

The nightmares still persist though, because despite that small flicker of warmth there in their cell now, the pain did not stop. Day in and day out, one or the other of them greet the Arena and its crowd. Night in and night out, Kuro dreams of drowning in a colorless void until there is nothing left of worth in him anymore. His dreams end when he becomes a monster that terrifies even himself.

He thrashes, and he cries. He makes confetti of his bed sheets and gouges scars in the walls.

Until one night, something sparks in the nameless black of his dreams. Small and white, it bristles against the lifeless night, puts out tendrils of light that call warmth to his skin and calm to his mind. The monster he is supposed to be shrinks from its glow until it is nothing more than a shallow puddle, so threadbare Kuro can step in it without so much as a splash.

And then sleep comes easy.

Without Shiro, Kuro doesn’t know if he would have ever found peace.


	6. MindControl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is where is gets interesting! I love theprojectava's take on this whole bit, so please go read it [here](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/162209965743/kuro-week-day-6-mind-control-so-this-turned)!!

It’s otherworldly. This electric pulse of a presence that ghosts along the periphery of his mind. Small at first, it builds, and it builds until it's not just an inconsistent buzzing at the back of his skull but a defined being.

Another mind spilling into his, and for a moment, Kuro thinks he has finally lost it. This is the crack the Druids put inside of him, and instead of things pouring out, they’re tumbling in, trying to claim whatever they can of him. Impulse tells him to fight it.

Resist. Resist. Resist.

He’s isn’t broken yet.

Then, in a voice calm and stoically collected, something else whispers to him of patience. It tells him this is not the same black that the Druids try to infuse into his entire being. Neither callous nor cold, it offers a soothing warmth, something innate to its very being. It flickers white then red, then is followed by black marbling throughout both hues until it’s burning with a soft glow at the back of his mind.

Persistent.

It wants something of him, something he thinks he can give and willingly at that. So, Kuro reaches out to it. He sets his hands upon that shimmering orb, feels the heat beneath his fingertips, making his blood sing with life. It tells him that he is his own entity, that the heart within his chest is his own and that it aches with concern for the one it had been modeled after.

The ones calling out to him ache just as much.

No.

_More_.

The feelings that steep into his bloodstream carry a desperation far deeper than anything Kuro has ever known for the man called Takashi Shirogane. It’s a desperation born of intimacy, of hearts bound more closely to Shiro’s than Kuro could have ever claimed, and somehow, it’s that very thought that brings him to inviting them inside of all that he is. Because Kuro wants to know that too, wants to know what could bring someone - or someones - to the brink of hell itself for a man who had been built upon a lie.

Kuro wants to know what makes someone want to thread their lives together with another being so much they would risk everything for him.

So, he lets him in, the one whose voice called out the loudest inside of his mind. He gives the Red Paladin control, and he watches as Shiro stirs in response, called back from the remorseless depths of his own mind. And it sparks a quiet curiosity within himself, to see how someone can respond to a simple change, how someone can know the difference from one being to another just because of the energy they give off.

As if there’s a frequency inside of every heart, and Kuro’s has now magically aligned to another, and he’s watching as it matches Shiro’s, as it calls him home.

And from the observation deck of his own mind, he thinks yet again of how Shiro fought in the Arena. Because this, right here, is everything the man had been fighting for.

He thinks that a human heart isn’t such a bad thing to be beating within his chest.


	7. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one of my favorites! Final day and what a way to end it (aside from the extra day which will come up next)! You can read the conclusion [right here](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/162216126028/kuro-week-day-7-scars-one-day-while-lounging) and boy, have I come to love Lance and Kuro.

He had heard once that scars were a badge of courage. They were the proof of everything you lived through, of all that a living being could survive and still keep that ever forward march through time. Scars were evidence of all the things that tried to kill you but couldn’t.

It’s all very convenient, or so he thinks, to be able to tell yourself such things.

But like any story, not all of them fit the mold, and not all of them came with happy endings. He still doesn’t know where he fits in, or if he even will. He doesn’t know that this is home, but it is a place to live. He doesn’t think this is family, but he knows the Castle inhabitants aren’t as interested in the ways to cause him pain so much as they worry about all the ways he might inflict it upon them instead.

Some of them, at least.

Because he is Galra, and he isn’t. Because he is a would-be Paladin, and they have no special need for one of those.

Because they do not know him, and he does not know how it is you open a heart to play out your best intentions like a movie reel for all to enjoy.

What Kuro knows best is how to bind himself up, night after night, so he doesn’t lose himself any more than he already has.

Only Lance is there prodding at him now, and something around his heart unlocks and hits the floor of all that he is with a heavy metal _clack_.

The warmth that Lance offers him isn’t like Shiro’s. It’s not like Keith’s either, but it reminds him of that moment they had overtaken his head. Only it whispers of a concern that isn’t meant for anyone else but him.

For the first time, Kuro feels like he’s really being looked at, and it makes his chest pull tight, and the words fall apart on his tongue. He doesn’t know how to answer Lance without offering something more of himself. . .only, he thinks that maybe this is how things are supposed to go.

This is how a heart unravels.

His thoughts race over every scar lining his body, pulling out memories from each one like minnow from a stream until he barely remembers where one begins and another ends. It’s all one solid mass of pain, built upon a reputation he never had any right to but was forced upon him like a crown of thorns.

He’s no savior.

Couldn’t salvage the title of Champion from a human upstart. Couldn’t save himself from the lies the Druids tried to drown him with either. Couldn’t pull them himself nor Shiro from the wreckage, but could only watch as someone else cut them free from the Galra Empire.

But Lance looks at him like he has a right to all those things, every failure, every scar. Like he has the simple right to be until he can find something more of himself to want.

Lance looks at him like there’s a soul burning bright within the very center of him, and it’s worth holding on to.


	8. Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The unexpected but oh so very sweet conclusion to this painful week of backstory. Shower it and Kuro with all the love they deserve in this! [Enjoy this beautiful ending!](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/162241581258/kuro-week-day-8-free-day-magic-lance)

Magic happens when a smile spins more hope than starlight.

Magic forms when a hand reaches out and calls your soul back to the home it never thought it had.

Magic burns warm beneath skin and puts a tumble in your blood flow, so much that your heart has to race just to catch up with the breath trying to fill your lungs.

It’s that odd flash of feeling lighting up your brain and sinking into your cells, reminding you that there is infinitely more to all that you are than the world you’ve known has ever told you could be.

Kuro doesn’t know what sort of tricks Lance is pulling, but he knows that there is something unearthly in the way Lance moves against him. His whole body has gone stiff, prepared for war though Kuro doesn’t know against who or what exactly. But, the anticipation is there, putting steel into his muscles and reminding him that so rarely is there a thing called peace, even during his downtime. He hasn’t gotten used to the Castle just yet in that regard, still waits for the time when pain will creep into his sleep, and the nightmares will infuse their logic into his dreams until he can’t tell them apart any longer.

He still doesn’t know what it means to fight for the greater good, only that fighting is what he had been made for, and in fighting, comes injury and loss. He waits for both like a prisoner anticipating the jury’s verdict over the crimes against his own humanity.

How does one salvage their heart from themselves?

_Magic._

His shoulders are the first to give up their tension, relief cascading down his limbs like a river seeking its final resting place in the sea. Bit by bit, he falls into silence and marvels at the way a human touch can unravel the hurt and the expectations held by his body. Lance's fingers trace along the edges of a scar, and while Kuro could tell him the story of that particular one, Lance doesn’t ask. He simply lets his fingertips walk the outline of it as if coming to know its shape and the story it held by touch alone. The same way one can look at a crater gouged into the earth, and know, without hearing its tale, that something of a small disaster took place here. It left its mark, and still the world continues to move, still a heart continues to beat.

Life is tenacious if nothing else.

As Lance slides his hands around to his stomach, Kuro feels the tension threaten again, rising dark as shadows at sunset, only to find it reduced beneath Lance’s laughter. The sound is soul-saving. It’s the hand pulling him to shore after months of near-drowning in the inky seas he called himself. Lance’s laugh, warm and light against his shoulder, reminds Kuro that there is something solid of himself worth building a future upon.

Reaching down, he slides his hand along Lance’s, slowly sinks his fingers into the space between the Blue Paladin’s.

Coming home shouldn’t be this easy, but with Lance, somehow it is.

And as Lance’s lips continue to drift along his skin, luring the pain from body and thought alike, Kuro starts to wonder where the magic really is.


End file.
